Why am I unmotivated to playtest or solo play board games?

This is something I have realized recently. I am been excited to work on some game design ideas lately and made cool prototypes and when I am ready to playtest, I look at it and say Meh! I lack of motivation to actually play the game. It's like if the work was done and I did not want to go further.

Now that is very weird, because when designing video games or Mods it's actually the opposite. I am very excited to know if it's going to work. Sometimes too much and I have to force myself to stop playing to continue development. While for board game, it feels long, annoying, boring and gives me headache.

I talked with my GF about it and we tried to find the source of the problem. First of all, video game testing has 2 steps, there is first the debugging (does the game behave as it should) and the design (is the game fun and balanced) while for board games, you do not have debugging: Pawns will always move they way you want them to move. Unless you are testing special components like cube towers, stackable objects, etc.

So maybe the excitement comes from debugging testing, and when that would be done, I would still get bored at the design testing phase. Another elements is that board games are much more tight, so their design needs to be tested as whole and more rigorously. While video games would require much less game design testing.

Else board games could have longer setup time, mechanic resolution and packing at the end. In multiplayer games you will have to play all players. These are other factors that could make playtesting more annoying.

So this is the reason why I tried to focus on 4S games (Simple, Short, Small, Social) because not only it's easier to find playtesters, but it's also less painful and unmotivating to playtest.

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Now we have pushed the reflection further and tried to compare it with board games I do not design. For example, why do I play board games, or what attract me in board games. The following answers came out:

1. Immersion: Being put in another person's situation and try to manage it (Secret Agent, company manager, Army leader, etc)

2. Strategy: Being able to make interesting strategic decision, but it must be closely linked to the theme to make sure it does not feel like a puzzle. The strategic decision must somewhat make sense with reality.

3. Social: I put some though on the abstract game Lumis and what makes this game very interesting is the partnership with the other players. In that case, the abstraction does not matter and social aspect takes the lead. 1812 is also an awesome game with a strong social aspect.

Now when playing board games as solitaire, it seems I have the same motivation problem then when testing games as solitaire. It's less worst because the game is actually complete and working. But for example, I would rather much play elder sign on my tablet than with my board game even if I have the expansion and can change the rules (stuff I cannot do with the digital version)

Now it's possible that I assume that board games needs to be played with other people, and when it's not happening, it feels odd. As a comparative example, I cannot watch a movie alone, I thinks I can count the number of times it happened in my life with my hands. Maybe it's because I was used to see movies with my farther, so for me it became the standard. So it could be the same with board games. I assume it must be played with people. Still I am not sure if training myself to play solo games could actually overcome the problem.

Else for video games, even when playing games where you don't have a direct opponent, you always feels that you are not playing alone. So video games create the illusion of additional players, it brings much more surprises as the player are not controlling the book keeping and AI mechanics.

The game is also much faster to play and sometimes it becomes much more simpler. For example, I played the digital version of Small World to realize this this game is somewhat very simple and I would even say dumb. It's just that when you play the board game version, the component manipulation and social relations gives you "Work" that makes the game look less dumb.

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So I don't know if many of you had that situation before. Do you have suggestion on how to overcome this problem? Does doing more solo gaming would actually solve the problem?

Now I understand why people play solo, mostly to be away from electronic screen and to manipulate pieces. But for me it looks more tedious and I feel exhausted just by looking at it.

Thanks for any insight.